Friday, June 12, 2009
The Cocktail Party Effect
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I found this article in the bloogers. I thought it was pretty interesting in that we have been talking about this in class and that we as people tend to think it is easy to multi task and listen and do many things. Colin Cherry, then at Imperial College London (Cherry, 1953.) Cherry used the method like we did in class of playing two messages at the same time to people. He discovered just how good we are at filtering out what we hear. It is very hard as we found in class and Cherry realized to listen to two voices presented at the same time it's very hard yet possible. The farher apart you are from the conversation the easier it is to confuse the listeners.
Cherry's second expierment was the suprising one and this was when he put one conversation in someone'e left ear and a total different conversation in the right ear and found that it is easy to tone out one ear and listen to only one converstation. One study has found that two-thirds of people don't even notice when their own name is slipped into the unattended speech, while those who do notice are likely to be of the extremely distractable variety (Conway, Cowan & Bunting, 2001).
You have been warned!
I thought this was a interesting article and that our brain and sences are incredible when it comes to different situations.
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I find this very interesting because i have heard from people that they think that it is easy to multi task and with personal experience i don't think that it is at all. I can't even work on my computer and talk on the phone while the tv is on. I think that one thing is distracting and that leads to anther ditraction.
ReplyDeletePeople claim to be able to multitask and think that they can get more done in a shorter amount of time, but as we've seen, it is very difficult to focus on more than 1 thing at a time. In reality, these 'multitaskers' aren't doing any of the tasks well. I think that this is a case of mindlessness also. For example, those that talk on the phone while driving are usually not driving with the attention that they should, just letting auto-pilot take care of it. Focus on the task at hand. The job wil get done better, and as Langer's studies have shown, you'll be healthier for it as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree, when multitasking people seem to get lost in what they are doing. if you stop and do one thing at at time, you might be able to not only get things done, but you could remember what you did.
ReplyDeleteI think it might be possible to improve on multitasking, at least a little bit, with practice. I worked in a busy Mexican restaurant for several years in high school and somehow trained myself to listen to both my co-workers and customers, while actually preparing the food and sending it down the line to be added on to. In the beginning, it was difficult to remember anything at all, but if i was to try again now, I could do it with few mistakes or questions.
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